When planning first began to launch a journal of international law with a specifically European orientation the Berlin Wall was still standing. EJIL was born in a time of intense change – the first issue was published in 1990, the year of German reunification – and, indeed, the life of the Journal tracks our post-Cold War world. Twenty-five years later we celebrate EJIL’s birthday with a Retrospective – an exhibition in which visitors can glimpse not only the evolution of the Journal and the discipline but also in many respects the last quarter century in the life of international affairs and international law.

The exhibition, available on the EJIL and OUP websites, includes a main feature and some special exhibits. We selected, chronologically, year by year, two or more articles to represent each volume. Like curators of an exhibition we combed the EJIL archive, at times marvelling at the rich choice of articles and at times anguishing over the difficult and ultimately subjective selection. We tried to choose articles that would give a flavour of the world in which they were written, the diversity of scholarly approaches which has been a hallmark of EJIL since its inception and, plain and simply, a ‘good read’ even in some cases after many years.

A number of special exhibits complete the Retrospective. The EJIL Tables of Contents have been aggregated into one chronological file, providing a fascinating account of the evolving field of international law and its community of scholars. EJIL has always had an eye for young talent and readers may well recognize some of today’s most respected scholars in their more youthful productions. The Editorials, too, have been collated into a single file, reflecting different styles and sensibilities of our various editors. Our Book Review Editor, Isabel Feichtner, selected 25 book reviews, one for each year, memorable for the book or for the review, to create another special exhibit. Finally, the Roaming Charges photos and the Last Page poems have been collated into special exhibits.

We hope you will enjoy the Retrospective and join us in a toast to another 25 years of academic excellence and innovation in EJIL.

This issue opens with the first entry under our new, annual rubric, The EJIL Foreword. Taking the ongoing debate concerning the United Nations’ role in the Haitian cholera tragedy as his starting point, Jan Klabbers presents a masterly tour d’horizon of the intellectual origins, current state, and future prospects of the law of international organizations. In the process, he reconstructs – and exposes the blind spots and biases – of a functionalist theory that he identifies as specific to and underlying that law.

In the next article in the issue, Janina Dill presents a novel framework for understanding the different set of demands made on states in war. Identifying ‘three logics of waging war’ – associated respectively with international humanitarian law, military strategy, and an individual rights-based morality – she concludes that the three cannot be reconciled, presenting war-making states with an irresolvable ‘trilemma’. On a related topic, but adopting a very different approach, Amanda Alexander presents a new and revisionist history of international humanitarian law, locating its origins in the work of a particular set of actors from the 1970s onwards. Bart Smit Duijzentkunst and Sophia Dawkins, draw from relational contract theory to construct an innovative model of arbitration in peace processes, and demonstrate the value of that theory and model through a set of carefully presented case studies. And Ulf Linderfalk’s short article on the perennially relevant topic of treaty interpretation adduces a series of well-chosen examples to elucidate the relationship between the aims and means of interpretation.

In Roaming Charges, the ‘Moment of Dignity’ is a photograph that celebrates the small traditions we risk losing in our fast-moving world. The photographer is Martin Lestra, PhD researcher at the European University Institute. We remind our readers that submissions to Roaming Charges are welcome.

The articles section of this issue is rounded out by the return of two of our regular rubrics, EJIL: Debate! and Critical Review of International Jurisprudence, both addressing topics relating to the European Court of Human Rights. Under the first, we present Stéphanie Hennette Vauchez’s somewhat provocative article on the issue of gender balance within the Court, assessing the politics of the appointment process through a detailed analysis of the self-presentation by the 120 or so women who have applied for positions on the Court. We publish Replies by Françoise Tulkens and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, both of whom have direct, personal experience of that process. Finally, Paolo Lobba surveys the development of the Court’s jurisprudence on Holocaust denial, which he argues has important implications for ‘denialism’ in relation to other core international crimes.The Last Page, offering nourishment for the soul as well as the mind, presents a poem by Dimitri Van den Meerssche entitled ‘Calling Themis’.

Here are our ‘vital stats’ for 2014. Each year we track trends in the submission and publication of unsolicited manuscripts according to criteria of gender, place of submission and language. Note that there are no special requirements for authors wishing to submit to EJIL (you don’t have to hold a PhD or have a tenured position or write with impeccable Oxford English) nor is there any editorial affirmative action in selecting manuscripts for publication. Our double-blind review process guards against that. So the statistics we present speak plainly about the submissions we receive and the manuscripts accepted for publication.

Having seen a rise in the percentage of manuscripts submitted and published by women authors in the previous two years, the figures stabilized in 2014 at 35 per cent both for submissions and accepted articles. The figure was 28 per cent for published articles (recall that published articles largely reflect submissions of the previous year). For now I regard this as a blip – I doubt it signals a trend.

We divide the world into four regions for our statistical purposes: the European Union, the Council of Europe countries outside the EU, the US and Canada, and the rest of the world. This statistic might seem a little misleading as it indicates the place of submission – normally the institution at which authors work or study, rather than their actual nationality – but overall we believe it conveys a fairly reliable picture of our authors. Of the total number of manuscripts submitted in 2014, 43 per cent came from the EU, 8 per cent from CoE countries, 25 per cent from the US and Canada and 24 per cent from the rest of the world; very similar figures to those of the previous year. For accepted and published articles, the EU took a slightly larger share of the cake, with 58 and 59 per cent of the total, respectively, whilst CoE countries claimed 5 per cent of accepted articles and a larger 15 per cent of those published. For the US and Canada, the figures were 16 per cent for accepted articles and 20 per cent for those published, whereas the rest of the world took 21 per cent of accepted articles and only 6 per cent of published articles. The 2015 ‘published’ figures will reflect the higher rate of acceptances from the rest of the world in 2014. Read the rest of this entry…

1.Essex Human Rights Summer School, 29 June to 7 July 2015. The Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex is delighted to announce the full details of our Essex Human Rights Summer School, which will take place at our Colchester campus from 29 June to 7 July 2015. Following on from our highly successful launch last year, the Human Rights Centre will offer its five day summer school in Human Rights Research Methods from 29 June to 3 July. This will be followed by a second week (6 – 7 July) of thematic modules on cutting edge issues in human rights.We have put together an exciting teaching team of some of the leading Essex and external human rights academics and practitioners, all with extensive experience of researching and working on human rights issues in a wide range of contexts. The summer school is ideal for human rights professionals working in NGOs, government and international organisations; lawyers; academics and postgraduate students. Full details on the modules, sessions and how to book a place, including details of an early booking discount running until 20 April, are available on our website.

2. The fourth annual international “Law and Boundaries” conference will be held at Sciences-Po in Paris on 17-18 June. It is relevant for PhD candidates and for young scholars (i.e. recently and no so recently graduated PhD), not necessarily from the legal field and preferably with a critical perspective (but not only “crits”). The call for papers is here.

3. The University of Sussex is hiring a Professor of International Law. See the announcement here.

4. The Centre for International and Public Law (CIPL), Brunel University London announces its annual guest lecture followed by an in-depth discussion, “The Economic Crisis and The Failure of Human Rights”, to be held ON Tuesday 21 April 2015, from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm in the Moot Court, Elliott Jacques Building, Brunel Law School, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH. Guest Speaker: Professor Aoife Nolan (University of Nottingham); Chair: Professor Manisuli Sssenyonjo (Brunel University London). A reception will follow at 5.00 pm by serving free refreshment. More information is here. Read the rest of this entry…

Comments Off on Announcements: Essex Human Rights Summer School; CfP on Law and Boundaries (Paris); Professor Vacancy (Sussex); CfP on Economic Crisis and Human Rights (London); Conference on Quantum in Investor-State Arbitration (London); Summer Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Washington); CfP on the Chagos Litigation (Greenwich); CfP on Use of Force

The second conference of the International Society of Public Law (ICON·S), around the theme of ‘Public Law in an Uncertain World’, will be held in New York, at the New York University School of Law, on 1 – 3 July, 2015. The Call for Papers and Panels is open until 10 April 2015 and more information is available on the ICON·S website.

EJIL on your iPad!!!

We have ‘gambled’ and invested considerable resources, human and material, in developing a tablet version of EJIL. We believe a tablet version represents a perfect adaptation of one of our most important identity markers to the digital age and current reading habits.

The identity marker has two facets. The first is our huge commitment to a Journal which is not only edited but ‘curated’. For each issue we pay attention not only to the individual articles but to the ensemble. We try to make, in each and every issue, the whole greater than the sum of the parts, with careful, even loving, attention given to the construction of an interesting, rich and satisfying whole. Not just something of interest to different tastes and constituencies, but a more holistic concept of what a good journal issue should be and feel like. I have habitually extolled (and cajoled) our readers to actually pick up the hard copy of EJIL to enjoy the ‘book feel’ of each issue.

The second facet is our long-standing commitment to the aesthetics of publication. It is based on the premise that beauty is an integral part of the world of the mind. A well-written article, for example, has a beauty that stands independently of the content as well as enhancing such. We all spend a huge amount of time and effort on our research and writing, and EJIL believes that the result deserves a presentation that does justice to such effort. A beautiful painting deserves a beautiful frame. If you look at the paper version of EJIL you cannot fail to notice this commitment reflected in seemingly trivial details such as the quality of paper and print. OUP has been our wonderful partner in crime in trying to achieve this.

We are, however, aware that for many the paper version is at best a (beautiful) doorstop. Hence the tablet version of EJIL – capturing both the holistic and ‘wholistic’ sense of each issue as well as its aesthetic qualities.

A tablet version is quite different to ‘going online’. The entire issue downloads onto your tablet. You can then browse and read at leisure away from your desk. If you are like me, it is likely to be on some long flight. You can leaf through the issue or click a title in the ToC and skip to it.

To be clear, the tablet version will not replace the online access that subscribers are entitled to on the OUP platform or the free access to the EJIL archives (except for the current year) on the www.ejil.org site. Rather, it will offer a new and different reading dimension.

We gambled that the tablet version will be a huge success with many of our existing subscribers and will encourage many other readers to become individual subscribers. Make no mistake: this initiative is not driven in any way by economic considerations. The individual subscription to EJIL is among the lowest in the field, if not the lowest, and has been kept constant for years. It is practically an at-cost price. You will also note that the difference between the individual subscription rate and the cost of membership in the European Society of International Law (ESIL) is negligible. All members of the Society are offered a subscription to EJIL. So my recommendation would be to use this occasion to become a member of ESIL and enjoy all membership benefits as well as a subscription to EJIL, including access to the new tablet version!

The app will launch with this issue of the Journal. In a first phase it will be available only for Apple devices. An Android version will follow shortly. Access to content through the app will be limited to individual subscribers and ESIL members. Subscribers should visit www.exacteditions.com/print/ejil and enter their OUP customer ID number for authentication, then simply follow the links from that page to install the app to their device. New subscribers will receive full instructions from OUP.

For those attending the ASIL meeting in April, visit the OUP stand. There will be free access to the EJIL app in the vicinity.

Finally, although we tested a beta version for several months there are bound to be some teething problems (please be patient) and ways to improve the tablet version. Do not hesitate to write to us.

First off, I’d like to express my sincere gratitude for the care and thoughtfulness with which Professors Tom Dannenbaum, Jan Klabbers, and Paul Stephan have engaged my article. Before turning to their individual commentaries, I want to briefly address one common theme in their remarks: that the link between IO legitimacy and IO reputation for compliance with international law can be quite complicated.

That’s absolutely right; after all, compliance with international law is only one facet of IOs’ legitimacy. Other facets include the morality of IOs’ actions (or omissions), IOs’ effectiveness in achieving the purposes for which they were created, and—especially in the context of technocratic organizations—their scientific and technical expertise.

In this article, I focused on compliance with international law because I was seeking to explain why the IO Responsibility Articles will have important practical consequences. That required explaining why IOs and their member states would pay attention to claims made in transnational discourse about IOs’ international obligations and possible violations. I argued that IOs would heed such discourse because it could threaten their reputations for complying with international law, and IOs have even more reasons than states do to cultivate those reputations. IOs that flout international law risk being perceived as illegitimate, and IOs that are perceived to be illegitimate will be less effective—and will face more obstacles to securing both financial support and cooperation from their member states.

I completely agree, however, that a fuller account of when and why IOs and their member states will be motivated to comply with international law would have to wrestle with the other facets of IO legitimacy—and especially the way they might be in tension with one another. Read the rest of this entry…

Starting with the present issue, we will be publishing The EJIL Foreword in the first issue of each year.

The idea, and the title, are unashamedly ‘borrowed’ (we did not ask them) from the famous Harvard Law Review Foreword. We will be inviting each year a ‘distinguished’ scholar in the field – distinguished not simply by an illustrious career, but also by having, we believe, something interesting to say – to present a ‘state of the field’ type article, permitting on an annual basis a regular ‘deep breath’ reflection on international law with a horizontal appeal to many readers.

A higher word limit, in the range of 40,000 words, will permit, we trust and hope, a more extensive analysis, synthesis, conceptualization, or systemic theorization than is usually possible in an EJIL article. Considerable licence will be given to each author to define the topic of his or her Foreword, but in principle it will be expected to:

define an original vision of the field, and/or

reflect on the state of the discipline as a whole (or a particularly pressing challenge facing it)

in light of recent events and developments in practice.

The inaugural Foreword, by Jan Klabbers, published in this issue captures, in its ambition, breadth and depth, precisely the type of piece we have in mind. We also invite readers to watch the extensive EJIL Live! conversation with Professor Klabbers concerning his Foreword.

The celebrated Hague General Courses serve in some ways a similar function to TheEJIL Foreword, but both the format and size of a General Course of International Law are quite different. Our own ambition and hope is that the Foreword will establish itself in its own way as a kind of ‘cousin’ of the General Course, an important ‘event’ on the IL intellectual calendar, and that over time the accumulation of EJIL Forewords will constitute a repository of profound reflection on international law itself and of self-reflection on the academic discipline of international law.

The Council today adopted by consensus the resolution on privacy in the digital age, which includes the creation of a new special procedure. Bearing in mind the wide scope of the right to privacy, this SR is sure to be a mega-mandate. The resolution is available here; Privacy International press release here.

The latest issue of the European Journal of International Law will be published next week. Beginning tomorrow, we will have a series of posts by Joseph Weiler, Editor in Chief of EJIL. These posts will appear in the Editorial in the upcoming issue. Here is the Table of Contents:

Jochen von Bernstorff, International Law and Global Justice: On Recent Inquiries into the Dark Side of Economic Globalization, Review of Emmanuelle Tourme-Jouannet. What is a Fair International Society?; Chios Carmodi, Frank J. Garcia and John Linarelli (eds). Global Justice and International Economic Law; Iris Marion Young. Responsibility for Justice; Thomas Pogge. Politics as Usual. What Lies Behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric.

Kristina Daugirdas renders an excellent exposition of a particular kind of argument about the development (us economics-oriented folk might say production) of international law. She focuses on the ILC’s Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations, a measure that some have criticized as premature. The degree of discomfort with the project that IOs have shown, however, might suggest (somewhat paradoxically) that its time has come, if only as a focus of debate. She illustrates the salience of the Draft Articles through the lens of the cholera crisis in Haiti, a matter that the United Nations has handled with all the finesse of a Fortune 500 CEO confronted horrific product liabilities.

Within the terms of her argument, Daugirdas succeeds in establishing her conclusion. The Draft Articles provide a defined and ostensibly neutral set of claims about responsibility and compensation. The absence of clarity in the international legal system about the content of the international law that IOs might violate, thus incurring responsibility, is not an impediment to talking about this. Debates about responsibility can contribute to the definition of primary obligations. Acts of reparation can reinforce the legal, rather than political and moral, nature of the obligation. An important means of inducing potentially responsible actors ‒ IOs ‒ to confront these claims is the impact of their actions on their reputation.

I do not want to push back against any part of Daugirdas’s argument. Rather, I want to use this opportunity to reflect a bit on the value ‒ and limits ‒ of two concepts on which her argument rests. Both transnational discourse and reputation present interesting problems that Daugirdas acknowledges, but understandably does not fully explore. My ultimate goal is to move the goalposts for talking about the processes involved in producing international law.

Transnational discourse. Let me posit that law making and law applying is largely a discursive process involving the manipulation of symbols to achieve verbal communication. In other words, talk matters a lot. This brute fact may frustrate the economically oriented, who usually prefer to look at preferences revealed by actions and may regard discussion as potential disinformation. No competent lawyer, however, can fail to attend carefully to the arguments made in the process of moving towards a legal outcome. Read the rest of this entry…